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May 25, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:30
May 25, 2010, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
That is right, uh Johnny Donovan, and it is a very, very difficult job selling my fellow Americans on the moral superiority of individual liberty and its main ingredient limited government.
Well, once again, it's Walter E. Williams, and I stress E because there's another Walter Williams out on the West Coast, and uh he's uh until he uh leaves us, I'm going to insist that you use Walter E. Williams.
Now, um what I want to do, you know, let's start off the show by I want to put to rest a lot of controversy out there, namely the controversy surrounding the uh the interview with uh Rand Paul on the Rachel Maddow show.
Now, for those of you who haven't kept up, uh Rand Paul, uh he is the U.S. uh Senate hopeful, he's a Republican from Kentucky, and he's caught up in a swirl of misunderstanding in response to his comments on the MSN MSNBC uh show.
He's been a matter of fact, he's been dishonestly accused of saying that private businesses uh have a right to discriminate against black people, but there's a partial uh I think the uh the Rachel Madow people, they they're just lying.
Uh he did not say that.
He says, let me go back.
Uh Maddow says, I'm reading the uh transcript, says, Do you think that a private business has the right to say we don't serve black people?
Paul answered, quote, I am not, I am not, I'm not, yeah, I'm not in the favor of any discrimination of any form.
Now, what the news media did, they took that statement, I'm not, I'm not, yeah, as being, yes, I am in favor of private discrimination.
Paul did not say that.
They're just uh making it up.
Now, of course, um uh Paul did tell uh people, and Maidal included, that while he supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act, in general, he thought that the provisions banning private discrimination might have gone uh a little bit too far.
And with that comment, the Democrats launch into a launch an attack on Paul accusing him of being a racist.
The Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele uh said uh Paul's philosophy is misplaced in these times.
Uh but he added that Paul has a libertarian perspective, and he has a very, very strong view about the limitation of government intrusion into the private sector.
Well, let's look at this issue of discrimination.
And uh in private acts.
I'm not talking about discrimination in public schools, I don't think should be allowed uh discrimination in public libraries, I don't think allowed in anything involving government.
I don't think that racial discrimination should be allowed, should be permitted.
But in private acts, I'm asking, should people have the right to discriminate by race, sex, religion, and other attributes.
Well, in a free society, I say yes, they do have the right to discriminate.
Now let me give you some examples.
You say, uh Williams, what are you talking about?
Well, back in 1960, when I was choosing a marriage partner, I systematically discriminated against white women.
I didn't give Asian women an equal chance to marry me.
I didn't give women with criminal records, or women that did not bathe regularly.
I did not give them an equal opportunity to marry me.
Now you might say, uh, hey, Williams, look, that kind of discrimination doesn't hurt anybody.
Well, if you said that, I I would be insulted, because when I chose to marry My wife, Mrs. Williams, I harmed other women.
I reduced their opportunity set.
And so I I did harm uh other people.
Now, but here's other kinds of discrimination.
And let me ask you, do you think people should have the right to discriminate this way?
For example, the Nation of Islam discriminates against having white members.
The Aryan Brotherhood discriminates against having black members.
The Ku Klux Klan discriminates against having Catholic and Jewish members.
The NFL discriminates against having female quarterbacks.
The NAACP, Board of Directors, at least according to their photo on their website, has no white members.
So I I think one of the things that we have to recognize that people do discriminate.
Matter of fact, a good working definition of discrimination is just the act of choice.
And when you say, well, I'm going to choose according to race, I'm going to choose according to sex, I'm going to choose according to blah, blah, blah, blah, you're just specifying the choice criteria.
Now, there's there's another question that we have to ask.
That is, under our Constitution, the federal government has no legal authority to prohibit discrimination by private entities.
They have absolutely there's nothing in the Constitution.
And I want one of these sharp lawyers out there to call the show and tell us where in the Constitution.
I don't want any mumbo-jumbo.
I just want a statement in the Constitution that the federal government can stop private discrimination.
nation.
There's no authority whatsoever.
And so Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is unconstitutional.
Now, of course, states have the right to prevent discrimination, but should they do so?
You know, see, one of the things that you have to keep in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that the true commitment or the test of one's commitment to freedom of association doesn't come when he allows people to be free to associate in the manner in which he deems okay.
The true test of one's commitment to freedom of association is when you allow people to associate in ways that you find offensive, that you find personally offensive.
It's just like free speech.
One's commitment to free speech does not come when he allows people to be free to say those things with which he agrees.
The true test of one's commitment to free speech comes when he allows people to say those things which he finds offensive.
So a lot of people who are against various forms of discrimination, they're really against individual freedom.
Here's a question.
It's kind of interesting.
If you look at Rand Paul's response to some of the criticism, he's not defending his position.
I mean, I think that what he should do...
He should uh aggressively defend whatever he said, pointing out the idea that excuse me, people, that that people should be free to make choices.
But I believe that Paul, like many other people, they might feel guilty.
They might feel a sense of of white guilt.
So what I have for these people who feel a sense of white guilt, you just go to my webpage, Walter E. Williams.com and click on gift.
And this will take care of your problems of feeling guilty.
Well, we can talk more about this, and that's what we're gonna do when we come back, And you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
We'll be back.
This is Walter E. Williams filling in for the Vacationing Rush Limbaugh.
And you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
Now, we're talking about discrimination.
I know a whole lot of people out there are saying, well, Williams, yeah, yeah, you have the right to discriminate against uh various women.
Uh uh the uh the Aryan Brotherhood has the right to discriminate against black members, but that's different.
It's not like trolley cars, restaurants, and hotel services that Title II of the Civil Rights Act uh prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, uh, color and nationality and religion.
Now, let's keep in mind that just because a place is a public accommodation, uh uh and just because it deals with the public doesn't mean that it's owned by the public.
That is, these places are privately owned, and I think that they, the owner should decide who is admitted under what conditions.
That decision should be up to the owner.
But let's say, let's look at this a little bit further.
Even if people are permitted to discriminate on the basic race and sex, will they do so?
Now, for example, now let's let's put it another way.
There are many things that I can do that I have the right to do, but will I find it in my interest to do it?
For example, I can empty my wallet in the street.
I'm free, there's no law against my emptying of my wallet in the street.
Well, will I do it because I'm free to do it?
Now, one of the things that you have to keep in mind is that whenever you see a law on the books, why do you think that law is there?
Well, the law is there because not everybody would behave according to the specifications of the law.
That's why the law is there.
So you say, well, why would there why were there all these Jim Crow laws mandating segregation?
Well, if if white people would not associate it with black people, why in the world would you need a law forcing them to do so?
Let me give you a very, very good example of this process.
Uh there's an article written by a former colleague of mine, Jennifer Robach, and it appeared in the Journal of Economic History, and the title of the article was The Political Economy of Segregation.
The case of segregated streetcars.
Her name is Jennifer Robeck.
Uh she was a colleague of mine at George Mason University.
Now, in the early part of our history, streetcars were privately owned.
Uh in the 1890s, there were ordinances written, laws written requiring the streetcar companies to maintain segregated cars.
That is to put blacks in the back and whites in front.
This was in Augusta, Houston, Jacksonville, Mobile, Montgomery, and Memphis.
Now, why did the city, why did these cities have a law mandating that streetcar companies segregate their their trolley cars?
Well, if if the if the private companies wanted to segregate their trolley cars, why would you need a law?
Obviously, they did not want to.
The same thing can be said with the segregated lunch counters, segregated hotels, segregated movie theaters, all these other Jim Crow laws.
Why would these Jim Crow laws be on the books if white people would not allow black to come in the restaurant?
restaurant.
Obviously, some white people would.
And the Jim Crow laws would be the uh segregation would begin to break down.
You know, for example, let's say that I'm a white person and and you're a white person and we own restaurants, and you want to maintain a segregated restaurant.
And I say I'm not going to maintain a segregated restaurant.
I'm going to allow whites and blacks to come in mine.
Well, what you're going to do, you're going to lose business.
Or at least you'll be envious of me, because I'm getting more business.
So you'll have uh you'll have incentive to get a law in uh enacted mandating that everybody have uh segregated facilities.
It's a matter of fact, it's very interesting.
It's the same phenomena with cigarette smoking.
You know, some jurisdictions, uh some of the restaurants ban cigarette smoking.
But what they found, they were losing customers to restaurants that did allow cigarette smoking.
So what did these restaurants get city councils to do?
They tried to get city councils to make all of the restaurants ban smoking so that they would not lose customers to the restaurants that had much more flexibility.
So what I'm arguing is that we would not have seen as much segregation had it not been for the Jim Crow laws.
And what the 1964 Civil Rights Act did, it offset another source of government power, namely the Jim and Crow laws that created uh segregation in the first place, or that at least backed it up.
Well, and I I believe another thing can be said about this so far as slavery, slavery in our country.
That is, we have to ask the question, how come slavery died without a great war in Brazil, in Europe, in the Caribbean, and we had a great war here.
Well, again, it was a government in our country that backed slavery, that made slavery last longer than it otherwise would have.
And I'll give you a couple instances.
The fugitive slave acts, I believe, of 1790, and then there's another one in 1850, where it held that slaves that escaped, let's say, from Virginia, a slave state uh to Pennsylvania, a non, a free state.
Well, it was a violation of the law for people to assist runaway slaves.
And so that made government backing uh slavery in our country.
So it lasts longer than that, and I think that it took an a an ugly uh civil war, very costly war uh to uh end it.
And matter of fact, for those of you who don't know this, the uh war, the Civil War was not fought to free slaves.
Uh it was fought for uh some other issues.
So anyway, I think that here's my here's my suggestion to ran uh to Rand Paul.
I think that he ought to vigorously defend his position.
But I I I can kind of sympathize with him because it's difficult to take to take principled positions when you're discussing the ideas with people who have little understanding.
That is, he was discussing the idea with uh uh uh Rachel uh Maddow.
I I've never watched the show, but I just caught a glimpse of it when uh when this whole controversy uh came up, and she's a person of little understanding.
I think that the Republicans uh who criticize him, they're people with little understanding, or they're people who just don't have much guts to do the right thing or to say the right thing.
There are many things that are politically unpopular, but you you you have to you have to r rest on principle rather than political uh popularity.
It's easy for Walter Williams to say that, why?
Because I'm a unaccountable.
I can be irresponsible.
I can talk about liberty, I can talk about the United States Constitution, I can talk about how Congress and the President, and and not just uh Obama but Bush and the and the Republican Congress how they all dumped on the United States Constitution because I I'm unaccountable I I'm unaccountable to anyone.
Matter of fact, people say to me, Williams, you're very bold.
Well I'm not bold, I'm not brave either.
I think I I say what I say, and I take the stance that I take and I announce them because I have highly diversified source of income.
That is I get my income from a number of sources so I can tell any two or three of them to go to go fly a kite will be back with your calls after this.
And the number is 800 28282.
Walter Williams sitting in for vacationing Rush Limbaugh and you can be on with us by calling 800 2828 two and let's go to the telephones and welcome to the show uh Juan from Miami.
Welcome to show one are you thank you for having me on the show.
Okay.
Um I first like to say that I'm a right wing ultra conservative and I like to say that what Ron Paul is saying and about their businesses being able to discriminate is wrong.
The reason why is because I used to own a uh grocery store and I'll give you a perfect example in 1992 we had Hurricane Andrews come by here and we could not raise the price of water because it was called price gouging.
Okay I I believe that businesses when they open the doors open to the public they create a public service a civic duty uh businesses have not a private club but a business and I think that we are wait wait wait wait who who owns the business who owned your business my my father owned the business.
Okay what what about if you wanted to paint the uh wall blue we're not talking about that we're talking about I know I know but no you you it's your business and so you have the right to decide the the conditions of the business.
Now the the government through see the the c the the government they have guns they can just tell they they could just tell you look you're gonna do what we say or we're gonna put you out of business.
Yeah but you're confusing things look we as conservatives to keep telling the government that we don't them that we could perform our civic duties or most civic duties without the government and yet we're gonna come around and say well you know what we're gonna start discriminating that first of all it's hypocritical.
Second it's it's it's reckless okay and we're gonna aid a lot of people the problem that I have with liberals and the reason why I'm a wait wait wait a minute wait look before you go to the point because Republicans use them.
Wait a minute or I we have to cut you off now now what I'm saying is that I find a person discriminating on the basis of race I find that personally offensive.
I think it is offensive to tell a person, you can't come in my store because you're a Puerto Rican, because you are a Mexican, because you are white.
I find that personally offensive.
But I think that it's the person's right to do so.
Your private home, if it's your farm, maybe.
And a public business where you have to open to the public, if you say no one over 21, if you say this is a private club, fine.
But when you open that...
you let and you let the public in you need to let the public in of all colors of all creeds of all races of all ages.
I totally disagree with what you're saying the problem with with libertarians and the problem that I have with Ryan Paul the same as the liberals is that they're intellectual and they're not using common sense and you're not using common sense here and we're gonna we're gonna shoot ourselves in the foot and we're gonna lose a huge amount of voters because of not using common sense we have we as Republicans we're Republicans.
As Republicans, we have to exclude more people.
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
I am not a Republican.
I am first an American.
And if you had to identify my political sentiments, I probably would call myself a Jeffersonian liberal or a Madisonian liberal.
That is, those people who are the founders of our nation who believe that the federal government should be, be limited and that we should obey the United States Constitution.
Now the question is if there's no constitutional authority for the federal government to come in and ban discrimination.
Are you going to say, well, the federal government should do it anyway and the heck with the Constitution?
No, I mean.
But but they wait, hold it, hold it.
You I you you have to answer the question.
That is, if the federal government has no authority under the Constitution, should it act unconstitutionally?
No, but that but the but the problem that we're that we're running into here is that um we're we're not you again, we're not using common sense to to uh to get the uh more people to no okay but no no I don't I don't care about common sense I don't care about good ideas or bad ideas.
I'm asking, is it permissible under the United States Constitution for the federal government to ban private discrimination?
Is it uh I'm not on the Constitutional Lawyer's and Well, I'm telling you that it is not.
It's nowhere in the Constitution.
Right.
And so now the state of Florida can.
Right.
But the that and that's indeed what the and as a matter of fact, while the state of Florida can do it, I would disagree that if Florida did do it.
But see, the point that we have to get, we have to get people to love liberty.
And to love liberty, you have to be a brave person because you have to trust that people will do those voluntary things that you find offensive.
That is, this is this is the problem that we're facing as a nation.
Too many Americans wish to control the lives of other people using guns and coercion and intimidation, and that should be offensive to American principles.
That is, if you go to a store, a guy says, Look, I I don't allow any Jews in my store.
Well, maybe you should say, well, yeah, it's your right to, but I think it's wrong.
It's not moral, it's not a good idea.
This is your fellow man.
I think you should change your behavior.
Look, you make a compelling argument, and and and and technically you're you're you're right, okay.
I'm not gonna say you're not, but what I'm trying to tell you is Rand Paul's trying to run as as a senator for the United States Congress, okay for the Senate, okay.
And here's the problem.
When you take such uh uh philosophical uh hard stance, and when you when you think as an intellectual and not as a as someone who who who besides with the people, you it's gonna cause problems not only for himself but for the party in general.
And I and you know you know what you know what I I think you're I think you're right about that, Juan.
That is that is you're absolutely right about that.
And that's why some people tell me, Williams, how come you don't run for high office?
How come you don't run for the presidency?
How come you don't run for the Senate?
You know what I tell people?
I say, if I had to run for high political office, I would have to rise above principle and do the right thing.
I would have to compromise my principles, and I'm not willing to do so.
And run and one is absolutely right because the uh and the tragedy is is that today's Americans, they will not elec a person to office with high principles.
That is, what I'm saying, and it's a true tragedy of our country, that is, if if uh Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, uh James Madison, if they were running for the United States presidency today, the American people would run them out of town on the rail.
They would tar and feather these people because the American people find their ideas offensive.
That is the you know, when when when Madison was trying to explain to the to the American people what was in the Constitution in Federalist Paper 45, he said the powers that we gave the federal government are few and well defined and restricted mostly to external affairs.
Those left with the people and the states are indefinite and numerous.
If you turn that upside down, you'd have what we had today.
That is the powers of the federal government are indefinite and numerous.
And you know why they're indefinite and numerous?
Because people like Juan, Good people have asked the government to come in to places and do things that it was not constitutionally authorized to do.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
It's Walter Williams sitting here pushing back their frontiers of ignorance.
Sometimes a very difficult job, but let's go to the phones and welcome Kirk from Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Welcome to the show, Kirk.
Hey, Walter, thank you.
Hey, I have a question for you about the NWCP and their practice of boycotting businesses and other things.
And we're going to call, we have a brand new movie theater open here in Fredericksburg, Virginia, which we're in a big Civil War history area here.
And the movie theater had an artist come in and paint a picture, a civil war picture.
And on that picture, they had a picture of the uh Confederate flag and American flag.
Well, some people complained about it, and I went to ask the manager why, and he said, Well, they didn't want the NWCP outfront boycotting the theater, so they painted over the Confederate flag.
To me, that changed history.
And and you know, it's kind of interesting that uh uh the the American flag, the stars and bars, the ships are carrying the stars and bars that brought slaves from Africa and and other places to the United States.
And so do you want to get rid of the American flag?
And that's my point to him.
I said, look, I said right across from you're the pub that has the English flag.
They fought the revolutionary war.
I said, I said I'm offended by that.
I said, how come I understand you don't want to offend people, but every time a black person complains and NWCP comes up, uh every business runs like, oh my God, we can't do that.
Well, see, okay, see, this is why.
This is exactly why.
Some years ago, I wrote my gift.
Uh that is what this gift, if you go to my website, Walter E. Williams.com and click on gifts, and what it is, it's a certificate of amnesty and pardon.
That is what I've done, I've given full and general amnesty and pardon to all white Americans or all Americans of European ancestry, both for their own grievances and those of their forebears against my people.
And the reason why I grant this pardon is because you stop acting feeling guilty and stop acting like fools.
That is, you know, do you tell the people uh who tell you to take down the uh Confederate flag, you tell them go play in the traffic.
No, I mean, don't pick you pick at the theater in the middle of the street during a traffic rush.
That's what you tell them if you had any guts.
That's if you did not feel guilty, that's what you should do.
Let's go to Rod from Memphis.
Welcome.
How are you?
Okay.
Can you hear me?
And I, you know, and I love that that hotel, doggone in Memphis where they had the ducks, uh, Peabody.
Wonderful hotel.
Have you been there?
No, I haven't.
Well, at five o'clock every day, the ducks get out of the pond and walk to the elevator and go to sleep.
Well, I bet that's real nice.
I'll have to go down to the city.
And they're so cute, too.
But go ahead.
What's your question?
I just wanted to say I'm just a random listener.
I just happen to be flipping through the channel.
And uh I just overheard you talking, and I just sort of I don't know, battles, I guess, word I should use.
I disagree with everything that you're saying, particularly on the uh discrimination.
Well, okay, well, let me let me just start.
Let's let's go bit by bit, and I'm give you a time.
Do you believe that I have the right to discriminate against uh let's say Chinese woman to to marry?
No.
Well, you okay, you said you're against discrimination, didn't you?
I mean, well, let me make sure you're I think all forms of discrimination is wrong.
You're making it sound like based on some level of knowledge or understanding that it's okay.
No, well, okay, look.
Now, here here's uh I was just really joking.
I shouldn't, that was a bad joke the first one about marriage.
But I think that uh there's a lot of confusion about discrimination about these terms.
And this is why, matter of fact, if you go to my website, I have a publication, it's called uh discrimination, the law versus morality.
Just cut click on their publications, and it's an article that I wrote some years ago for the uh Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, and I point out that there's a lot of confusion on these issues, and And because we don't use the words right.
Now, discrimination, I say in this article, is simply the act of choice.
That is when you when you choose when when I chose to work at George Mason University, I discriminated against other universities to work at.
When I choose one wife to marry, I discriminated against other.
You have to discriminate because discrimination is the act of choice.
Now wrong.
Pardon me.
It's wrong.
The example that you gave gave is just I I per se I the your take on it.
But bottom line, based on what you just said, it's wrong.
You you don't discriminate.
I try not to to the best of my ability.
Oh okay.
For example, how how what do you mean?
Well, you okay.
You live in Memphis, right?
I do.
Well, how come you don't live in uh in in in Richmond, Virginia?
I can't live in one place at more one time.
I I so you have to discriminate.
You can't discrimination, that's a choice.
That's what that's a discrimination is.
It's the act of choice.
No, you're you're you're taking discrimination to a level.
You're you're taking discrimination out of the context of the word itself.
You're making discrimination something else.
Well, what it is.
Let's see, not not a choice.
I mean, you I I'm not cho if I choose to eat ice cream over candy, then I I like ice cream.
I want an ice cream out of the case.
Yeah, you're not discriminating.
Yeah, you're discriminating you're discriminating in favor of ice cream over candy.
So anyway, but but look, we have to we have to uh get operational definitions to these terms that we use, or else there'll be a lot of confusion like we had with uh Rod.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
We're back, and that's Walter E. Williams holding forth pushing back the frontiers of ignorance.
And speaking of discrimination, in the next hour we're gonna talk about that a little bit because President Barack Obama, he's recently said, at some point, you have made enough money.
That's what we're gonna talk about.
It's uh uh um column written by my good friend and colleague uh Thomas Sowell called Enough Money.
And then I'm gonna talk about the salt tyrants, the people who want to correct your salt eating habits.
But let's go back to the phones and and by the way, look, let me before we get to the phones.
Look, there are three terms that we can we should pay attention to.
One is discrimination, the act of choice.
Then there's another term that's in this article I've written, very, very excellent article by I must say.
It's prejudice, and prejudice is just really prejudging.
That is, and economists can say pr prejudice is really acting on the base of incomplete information.
And we do it all the time.
That is, um there's a room and you're all talking in a room, and let's say, like my classroom, and when the class ended, you walk out there and you see a full grown tiger out there.
What are you gonna do?
The average person is going to endeavor to leave the area in great dispatch.
Now, okay, that's uninteresting, but why?
Is it because of any detailed information that he has about that particular tiger, or is he basing his uh decision on tiger folklore, what how he's seen other tigers behave, uh what his mother has told him about tigers, more than likely it's the latter.
Now, if he did not prejudge, if he was not prejudiced, he would try to get some more information about that tiger before he ran.
You know, you try to kind of pat the tiger on the head and see whether he's friendly, and then only if the tiger lunged at him, he would run.
And then the last thing is preference indulgence, that is to indulge your tastes.
And so there's three things discrimination, prejudice, and preference indulgence.
Now I know this is kind of heavy, but what we have to do if we're going to discuss these terms and these ideas rationally, we have to come up with operational terms or operational definitions for the terms we use.
That is, we can't say, well, discrimination can mean prejudice, it can mean stereotypes, it can mean uh uh uh Preference indulgence.
We have to come up with operational uh definitions.
And we might do a little bit of that of the next hour, but however, what I want to talk about the next hour is how you people have invited government into our lives.
And I don't know how we're going to get them out, but if we're going to be free, we need to get them out.
So the next hour, it's going to be salt tyrants and Thomas Sowell's Enough Money.
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